The Crimean War полностью

glow’d in this great woman’s holy cause.⁶

In popular plays and drawing-room ballads, Nightingale’s patriotic dedication and professionalism served to compensate for the damage done to national pride by the recognition that stupidity and mismanagement had caused greater suffering to the soldiers than anything inflicted by the enemy. In one play, The War in Turkey, produced in the Britannia Saloon in London, for example, there was a series of comic scenes ridiculing the incompetence of the British authorities, followed by a scene in which ‘Miss Bird’ (Nightingale) appears and sorts out all the problems left behind. The scene ends with a moral lesson: ‘In that young lady we behold true heroism – the heart that beats in her bosom is capable of any heroic deed.’⁷

The legend of the Lady with the Lamp became part of Britain’s national myth, retold in countless histories, schoolbooks and biographies of Florence Nightingale. It contained the basic elements of the middle-class Victorian ideal: a Christian narrative about womanly care, good works and self-sacrifice; a moral one of self-improvement and the salvation of the deserving poor; a domestic tale of cleanliness, good housekeeping and the improvement of the home; a story about individual determination and the assertion of the will that appealed to professional aspirations; and a public narrative of sanitary and hospital reform, to which Nightingale would dedicate herself for the rest of her long life after her return from the Crimea.

In 1915, when Britain was at war again, this time with Russia on its side, a statue of the Lady with the Lamp was added to the Crimean War Memorial, which was moved back towards Regent Street to accommodate the new figure. The statue of Nightingale was joined by one brought in from the War Office of a thoughtful Sidney Herbert, the Secretary at War who had sent her to the Crimea.⁸ It was belated public recognition for a man who had been hounded out of office during the Crimea War partly on account of his family connections to Russia.

On a sunny Friday morning, 26 June 1857, the Queen and Prince Albert attended a parade of Crimean veterans in Hyde Park. By a royal warrant the previous January, the Queen had instituted a new medal, the Victoria Cross, to reward bravery by servicemen regardless of their class or rank. Other European countries had long had such awards – the French, the Légion d’honneur, since 1802; the Dutch, the Military Order of William, and even the Russians had a merit medal before 1812. In Britain, however, there was no system of military honours to recognize the bravery of the troops on the basis of merit, only one to reward officers. The war reports by Russell of The Times and other journalists had brought to the attention of the British public many acts of bravery by ordinary troops; they had portrayed the suffering of the soldiers in heroic terms, giving rise to a widespread feeling that a new award was needed to recognize their deeds. Sixty-two Crimean veterans were chosen to receive the first Victoria Crosses – a small bronze medal supposed to be cast from the captured Russian cannon of Sevastopol.^bk At the ceremony in Hyde Park, each one took his turn to bow before the Queen as Lord Panmure, Secretary of State for War, read out his name and gave the citation for gallantry. Among these first recipients of Britain’s highest military honour were sixteen privates from the army, four gunners and one sapper, two seamen and three boatswains.⁹

The institution of the Victoria Cross not only confirmed the change in the idea of heroism; it also marked a new reverence for war and warriors. The troops who had received the Victoria Cross found their deeds commemorated in a multitude of post-war books that exalted the bravery of men at arms. The most popular, Our Soldiers and the Victoria Cross, was brought out by Samuel Beeton, best known as the publisher of his wife’s book, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, in 1861. Written to inspire and teach boys, the preface of Our Soldiers claimed:

Boys – worthy to be called boys – are naturally brave. What visions are those which rise up before the young – what brave words to speak, what brave actions to do – how bravely – if need be – to suffer! … This is the leading thought in this book about Soldiers – it is meant to keep alive the bravery of youth in the experience of manhood.¹⁰